9/11 heroes fueled by unity

Elizabeth Lara-Collado/The Jersey JournalJersey City firefighters raise the American flag at Exchange Place in Jersey City in the days after the 9/11 attacks.

In the days following the attacks on the World Trade Center crowds along the West Side Highway cheered emergency workers each day as they left the smoldering ruins.

“No matter how tired you were after being there so long, it was tremendously uplifting,” says Jersey City Fire Director Armando Roman.

“They lined up on the street saying ‘Thank you,’ with placards, with water, with food. It was an outpouring of camaraderie and love. As you were coming back home, it felt so good.”

Roman cut his vacation short Sept. 11, 2001 to rush to Exchange Place, where he hopped on a tug boat that carried him to Ground Zero. When he arrived he found chaos. Everyone was covered in gray dust. Emergency responders were making their way to the “gigantic pile of rubble and debris” to search for survivors amid a pyre of thousands of victims.

“The emotions were that of being heart broken, feeling sympathy, anger at the act itself and that so many people were suffering, wanting to do something to help.”

It didn’t matter who you were on Sept. 11, you did anything asked of you, down to the menial tasks of packing food and handing out sandwiches, says Roman, who was a captain at the time.

He guided heartbroken people searching for relatives. “It was very emotional. They had pictures of loved ones they were looking for. That to me was overwhelming.”

He feels the sense of unity experienced in those fall days 10 years ago has faded. “Unfortunately people have returned to normal. There was so much generosity being bestowed on one another.

“It was almost equivalent to everyone there being your brother or your sister. The love that one has for a brother or sister, the kind of love they share, that was the resounding feeling that one got.”